We were poor. Poorer than we’d ever been as adults, as a married couple, as a family. I had quit my full-time career that had supported us, gone part-time in a new position and then was laid off. The unemployment money had run out. My husband made enough to pay our bills, but we didn’t have enough for groceries. I was in graduate school working towards my new career. I needed work, something to do between then and graduating and being paid in my new profession, the profession that made my Soul sing.
I didn’t want to do just anything to bring home an income. I’d worked in a soul-sucking career for years, I didn’t want to do that again. Still, I took a job that went against so much of what I believed in, so much of what I stood for. We needed the money. We needed groceries. That job lasted three weeks. We were back to not having money for groceries.